Hunter's Moon
by Sandrine Shaw
Summary: "Poor little hunter girl. Looks like you're in a bit of a bind there." Deucalion chuckles, and Allison wonders how badly he'd hurt her if she told him the pun wasn't really that clever to begin with. (Allison/Deucalion)
1. Leverage

**Hunter's Moon  
I. Leverage**  
by Sandrine Shaw

Allison strains against the bonds that tie her to the chair. She remembers the training exercise her father put her through last spring, but she has no arrow-tip to cut through the ropes now, and every little twitch she makes only seems to pull them tighter until she gives up, breathing hard.

Behind her, someone chuckles. She makes the mistake of turning her head towards the sound, and the rope across her neck almost cuts off her air.

Deucalion walks into view, rounding the chair with a smile that has too many teeth. He reaches out and slowly drags a fingernail along the length of the rope, starting at her neck and traveling down towards the one that is fixed diagonally across her torso. If she had room to wiggle, she'd try to get away, but there is nowhere to go.

"Poor little hunter girl. Looks like you're in a bit of a bind there." He chuckles, and Allison wonders how badly he'd hurt her if she told him the pun wasn't really that clever to begin with. "If only you had claws now. One flick of your nail and those inconvenient ties would fall away."

Dread settles in her stomach, and she forces herself to sound calm and polite. "No, thank you."

He raises a quizzical eyebrow at her response. "That wasn't an offer."

"It sounded like one."

His eyes flash scarlet when he leans in, and his wandering finger trails back upwards until it finds bare skin. The tip is inhumanly sharp against her neck, the pressure just enough that he won't draw blood. Allison barely dares to breathe. "If I wanted to give you the bite, I wouldn't be _offering_."

He brushes against her pulse point, and it takes her a moment to realize that it's not his clawed nail she's feeling anymore but warm skin. She shivers against the touch.

"I bet you'd make a great wolf, though," he continues. "Most hunters would, that's the tragedy of it. They would be strong and deadly and perfect, but they'd sooner die than let themselves become the very thing they were brought up to destroy. But then, you already knew that, didn't you? I heard about your mother. Such a shame, really."

His smile stretches. Allison wants to wipe it away with an arrow through his forehead.

"I'm not my mother," she tells him, taking pride in the fact that her voice is almost steady. "Go ahead, bite me. All that you'll do is give me a better chance at tearing you and your pack apart."

She expects him to get angry at the threat, expects his human features to give way for the monster, expects to feel claws in her flesh. Instead, he throws his head back and laughs, warm and throaty, gray eyes sparkling with genuine mirth. He crouches down in front of her and holds her gaze.

"I like you, Allison," he says, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Allison thinks she'd almost prefer it if he was mocking her, but the way he's watching her with something akin to admiration tells her that he means it. She swallows against the sudden lump in her throat.

Objectively, she knows that he's good-looking, in the way some of her father's hunter friends are good-looking, all bulging muscles and easy self-confidence that comes with power and experience. He's not her type – she likes kind, young boys like Scott that make her smile and who she could overpower if she wanted to. Never mind that she remembers how Jackson used to make her heart flutter for a short while, or how Derek and his dark bad boy looks snuck into her dreams a couple of times back in the days when he was just Scott's mysterious older friend, before she knew what he was.

That's not an excuse she has now, with Deucalion. She knows he's a wolf, knows he's not one of the good ones, knows he's an enemy to Scott and to her father (also to Derek, but this is not one of the cases when the enemy of an enemy is a friend). And yet he oozes a raw, untamed sexual energy that's hard not to notice, no matter how much she tells herself she's unaffected.

His hand, drawing lazy patterns on her skin, raises goosebumps.

It feels good in a way that it shouldn't, in the same way that hearing him tell her that he thinks she'd make a good wolf was stroking her ego. She doesn't want it – doesn't want the bite, doesn't want him, not really (except for the tiny part in the back of her mind where she's locked all her anger and her pain away before the summer, the part that keeps straining against its confines, demanding to be let out), but oh, there's no denying that the attention he gives her is flattering.

She gnaws on her lips until she tastes blood, metallic and bittersweet. Deucalion's nostrils flare, and his eyes turn red.

He sits back on his heels. "What do you think your father would like less? If I delivered you back at his doorstep with the bite on your shoulder, or if I made you my bitch and sent you back home with my litter in your belly?" His tone is so mild and conversational that it takes a few seconds for the crude words to sink in, and when they do, Allison recoils as much as the ropes let her. Her heart is beating in her throat, the unwanted flames of arousal stifling at once and turning into fear.

Deucalion smiles. "Don't worry, I'm not going to. Either one would be a declaration of war, both to the hunters and to the pack, and I don't want to go to war against them. Not just yet, anyway."

He's wrong, Allison thinks. The pack wouldn't care if the Alphas forced the bite on her or raped her or left her for dead. Scott would care, of course, but Scott's not pack, and Derek would barely consider her collateral damage. She doesn't say that, happy to let Deucalion think she's more important than she is, as long as it keeps her safe.

"You should let me go, then, before they come for me," she tells him, trying to sound more confident and fearless than she really feels, hoping that the racing of her pulse won't betray her.

"So let them come. Let's see what they have to offer in exchange for your life. Until then..." He moves towards her lightning fast, hand curving around the back of her neck when he leans in, and she's too stunned to yell as his claws pierce her skin. "Dream of me," he whispers into her ear, hot breath brushing against her skin.

When he pulls away, his fingers are red with her blood. He brings them to his mouth and licks them clean, his eyes never leaving hers.

The wound at the back of her neck tingles, not unpleasantly, even if every shred of her instincts rebels against it. Her lids grow heavy and her body seems to be floating away from her.

She dreams.


	2. Reprieve

A/N: I don't know how this turned into a series. I literally have - no - idea. This will probably have four parts in total. At least, that's the plan. Then again, the original plan was for it to be a short 1k word ficlet and nothing more, so what do I know...

As for the time frame, I figure this would be set a couple of weeks after the events in "Leverage".

**Hunter's Moon  
II. Reprieve**  
by Sandrine Shaw

The blood loss is making her light-headed. Or maybe it's the pain that's flaring up like fireworks at every step she makes.

Allison stumbles through the woods, hand pressed against the wound in her side. She's been losing track of time, but it was night when the twins ambushed her and it's still night now, so it can't have been too long. A couple of hours, maybe more. She's been walking for at least an hour, but with the pain slowing her down more and more and no sign of civilization in sight, she's starting to realize that she might not make it home.

No one knows she's out here. Not her father, who would keep her locked in her room to ensure her safety if he had his way, bordering on obsessively overprotective even more than usually since the Alphas captured her. Not Scott, who's insistent on keeping her out of werewolf business as much as he can. Not Derek and his pack, for whom she only ever counts as either a liability or a potential threat, depending on the mercurial state of the Hale/Argent truce.

Her cell phone got wrecked when Aiden (or was it Ethan? She still hasn't quite learned how to tell the twins apart; can't be bothered to care, most of the time) threw her against a tree. That was before she put two wolfsbane-laced arrows in his gut. Before his brother sank his claws into her side. She's tried calling out for help, but she's probably too far out even for sensitive werewolf-hearing. If she was a wolf, her howl might alert the pack. But her human cries are swallowed by the woods, and she screams her throat raw without any effect.

If she dies out here, she's taking comfort in the fact that she may have taken Aiden with her. It's not much of a consolation, but it's all she has left.

There's a short-lived surge of relief when she stumbles out of the trees and onto a neat asphalt-covered road. Her steps quicken with the hope that she might survive the night after all. Home, for a minute, seems close enough to be within reach, and even the agonizing burn of the wound fades a little.

_Beacon Hills, 10 miles_, the road marker says, and Allison feels the energy draining from every cell of her body at the sight. She wants to sit down on the ground and cry.

Instead, she drags herself on.

And on. And on. Slowly. Agonizingly.

_I'm not going to die out here_, she tells herself, and she knows it's a vow she might not be able to keep.

She hears the car before she sees it, and she stands in the middle of the road where they can't miss her and waves her hands until the old black Buick stops right in front of her. The glare of the headlights is so bright that it's painful, after being enveloped by darkness for so long. Allison squints, trying to shield her eyes with her hand. It's impossible to make out the face of the driver, but it's not like she can afford to be picky right now.

She staggers around the front of the car, supporting her weight with a hand on the hood. The passenger side door is flung open in front of her, Deucalion leaning across the seat. "Get in."

Her fingers clench around the door handle. If she gathers her strength, whatever's left of it, maybe she can run back into the forest before he makes it out of the car. Maybe she can hide somewhere. And then... what? Wait until she loses consciousness and dies, bleeding, alone, miles away from anyone she knows? She stares at Deucalion, weighing her options. Knowing she doesn't have any.

He knows it, too, and the tone of his voice tells her that his patience is wearing thin. "Get in the car, Allison."

"So you can finish what your pack started?" She shakes her head. "I don't think so."

"If I wanted you dead, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now get in before you faint."

She considers the road before her, stretching miles and miles ahead until the next house, and she knows she can't make it on her own, even if he let her go. It's hard to imagine that he would, after he took the trouble to track her down out here. It's unlikely that he just happened to drive by purely by coincidence, which means he knows about the fight, knows that the twins left her out here and that she was in no condition to make it back home.

There's an undeniable logic to what he said. If he wanted her dead, she'd be dead already. He wouldn't be watching her stall outside of his car with amused exasperation written all over his face, like he knows she's trying to figure him out and coming up empty.

There's only one way to find out what he wants. Reluctantly she climbs into the car, wincing when the movement makes her wound rub against the torn edges of her shirt.

"I don't suppose you'll let me use your phone?" she asks lightly, thinking that if she could get a message to Scott or her father, they could maybe intercept Deucalion.

He raises a sardonic eyebrow at her. Apparently her question doesn't even warrant a verbal response.

"How about I drop you off at the hospital and we'll all live to fight another day?" he suggests.

"Sure." She smiles a fake smile, but the triumph in her voice is real. "I'm not so certain about your little friend though. I think I got him good before his brother tore into me."

He chuckles dryly. "Don't worry about Aiden, he'll be fine. He's a bit worse for wear right now and you're not exactly his favorite person, but he made it back in time for us to fix him up before your wolfsbane could run its course."

It's not what she wanted to hear. She shrugs. "Pity. I can't say I would have mourned him."

She wonders what would have happened if Aiden had indeed died. If Deucalion would have found her and offered her a ride then as well, or if they'd have returned to finish the job and killed her instead, a life for a life. It all comes back to what he wants, and she's still none the wiser. His offer to take her to the hospital seems genuine enough, even if it makes no sense that he should be helping her, essentially saving her life, without expecting anything in return.

Trying to figure out how to ask without making herself even more vulnerable, she's startled when he moves. He takes a hand off the wheel and reaches towards her, making her jerk away, but there's nowhere to go unless she wants to open the door and jump out of a moving car.

His fingers brush against her bare, bloody skin.

She expects- she's not sure what exactly she expects. Claws, maybe, and more pain. Instead, she watches the veins in his forearm turn black, pulsating under her gaze. It's instantly a little easier to breathe, and the excruciating pain fades little by little.

Scott once told her about this, months ago, about how he could help animals in Deaton's clinic by taking their pain away. She didn't know that particular brand of werewolf power worked on humans, and even if she had, it would still be weird to watch someone like Deucalion use it. It's such a typical Scott thing to do: kind, sympathetic, the embodiment of empathy. Deucalion is, in so many ways, the polar opposite of that; someone she expects to inflict pain rather than soothe it.

She keeps her eyes on his face – the harsh lines, the hard set of his jaw, the way his gaze flicks between the road and her – but it doesn't answer any of her questions.

At last, she gives in. "Why are you doing this? Why come and help me when it was your pack that did this to me in the first place?" It feels foolish to ask, like tempting fate, but she can't quell the burning need to understand.

"I told you, I like you, Allison," he says with a smile, and she can't help but laugh because it's so ridiculously, obviously, fake.

It's almost a relief to see him stop pretending a few seconds later, smile giving way to an expression that would have made her shrink back if she wasn't too weak to move and too wiped out to feel much of anything other than pain and exhaustion. In the darkness, illuminated only by the dim lights from the dashboard of the car, his red eyes shine like burning coals.

"I do it because I can," he says, voice like steel, and it's little comfort that this answer feels a lot more honest. "Because I want you to know that your life is in my hands. I could have killed you when we had you. I could have had my pack tear you apart tonight. I could have left you out there to bleed out alone with none of your friends knowing you were even in danger. If you're alive now, it's because I chose to allow it. And that's not just you. The same is true for any of your friends. You're a stubborn bunch, I give you that, but you're ridiculously easy to separate and lure into traps."

He pulls his hand away from her skin, and the rush of pain that closes in on her immediately when the touch is gone is almost strong enough to make her retch. It's only a few seconds. After a moment his fingers brush against her skin once again and the agony stops almost instantly. She wishes she had enough strength left to tell him where he can shove his special brand of _mercy_, but truth is, she doesn't know how long she could stay conscious without the way his touch is easing the pain.

"Do you expect us to be grateful that you haven't killed anyone yet?" she wants to know. Her speech sounds slow and slurred to her ears, and she's not sure if it's actually her voice or her perception that's messed up.

"I don't expect anything. I'm just laying down the facts."

It's a lie, of course. He must expect something, want something, or else he wouldn't be here. But curled up in the passenger seat of his car, feeling dizzy and feverish, her wound sluggishly bleeding and only his touch standing between her and an ocean of pain, she can't begin to figure out his motivation.

The rest of the ride passes in silence. Allison presses her cheek against the cool glass of the passenger window, drifting in and out of consciousness. Deucalion's hand never leaves her side, the pressure warm and steady and reassuring as long as she forgets who he is.

He stops at the emergency entrance of the hospital, leaving the engine running as he reaches across her body to open the door. The sense of vertigo increases. This time, when he pulls his hand away, the pain doesn't rush back in like it did before.

His hand, dirty with her blood, cups her cheek and turns her face towards him. It's a tender gesture, but there's something uncomfortably possessive about it.

"Run along now," he says quietly, and his lip curves in some private amusement she's not privy to and probably wouldn't share even if she knew what was going on in his mind. "I'll be seeing you around."


	3. Graveyard Shift

**Hunter's Moon**  
**III. Graveyard Shift**  
by Sandrine Shaw

She's in the graveyard when he finds her.

Her family's tombstones are lined up in front of her: Kate, Victoria, Gerard, a grandmother she never met. Allison comes for her mom, not the others. She has been trying to forgive Kate, because it wasn't all that long ago that she used to love her aunt like an older, fun sister and she's learned the hard way what Gerard's influence can do to a person, but there's a part of Allison that's realized that she never even knew the real Kate, and it makes it hard to mourn her.

She's barely even ready to mourn her mother. Everything about her death makes her angry. Angry at Derek. Angry at her father and Gerard. Angry at herself. Angry at her mother, most of all. That she'd go after Scott like that. That she'd choose to kill herself rather than face the reality of the bite. It seems to be the easy way out, a coward's choice, and nothing her father tells her about duty and tradition and strength can shake that feeling. It's impossible not to think, _If she had loved me enough, she would have lived and faced this, for me._

So she comes here every week to sit and stare at her mom's grave and try to bring herself to let go of all the anger that's been piling up inside her since that night. If she's honest with herself, she doesn't come here for her mom at all, but for herself.

Scott followed her a few times in late summer, after the Alpha pack had first made themselves known. She knew he meant well and was merely trying to protect her, but she sent him away with words that were harsh enough to sting. It wasn't Scott's fault; she just wanted to be alone.

She's not alone now.

There's no sound when he approaches, no rustle of dry leaves, no footfalls on the ground. But the air shifts in a way that raises goosebumps on her skin, and the tell-tale feeling of being watched crawls down her spine like a spider.

She grabs her crossbow and cocks it, scanning the area. The cemetery lies quiet and still. She could almost believe that there's no one else out there.

"Who's there?" she calls out. Doesn't really expect an answer, expects someone, _something_, to jump and attack, and her pulse beats faster in equal parts fear and excitement.

No attack comes. Instead, Deucalion calmly steps forward, out from the trees behind the last row of graves, sauntering towards her.

She keeps the bow trained on him. It should make her feel safer, knowing where her potential assailant is, knowing _who_ he is, being able to see him rather than having to watch out for a faceless danger from somewhere in the dark. Paradoxically, though, it makes her feel more afraid rather than less. She can't quite keep her hands from shaking.

"Better put that thing away," he tells her. "I'm not here to hurt you. And even if I was, you couldn't stop me. Or do you honestly believe that you could shoot me before I rip out your throat?"

"I could try." She tries to keep her tone light and firm, but she knows she's not fooling him. The way his mouth stretches and reveals a glimpse of teeth, the satisfied gleam in his eyes, the way he steadily crosses the distance between them without even looking at the weapon in her hands, lets her know that he can smell her fear.

She sets the crossbow down next to her where she could reach it, theoretically. "What do you want?"

"Who says I want anything?" He crouches beside her, altogether too close for comfort. She's itching to move away and put some distance between them, but that would mean admitting that he's unnerving her. It would mean giving in.

She remembers her dreams about him, the dreams he forced upon her -– weeks ago, when the Alphas held her hostage – remembers not being able to tell reality and dream apart there, alone and tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse. The dreams had lingered, afterwards, not with the same intensity or the same deceptiveness, but even now she sometimes finds herself gasping awake with Deucalion's names on her lips, his phantom touch making her scream in the dream, and not always in agony. The worst part is that she can't know what part of it is mind-control and what's just her own treacherous subconscious betraying her.

She flushes and tries to pull her gaze away from him, futilely.

He motions towards the gravestones in front of them. "Your family has been decimated rather quickly during the last year or so. No one left but you and your father now, is there?"

"Don't," she snaps sharply.

He laughs, and it makes her shiver. No one ever laughs out loud in graveyards. People keep their voices down and speak in solemn, hushed tones. Deucalion clearly doesn't care about convention, doesn't feign any sort of respect for the dead that lie buried here, probably wouldn't hesitate to spill her blood all over her family's graves if it suited him.

It lets her emotions boil over, all the fear and the anger and the pain of the last months, and the way he's sitting here laughing and issuing thinly veiled threats against her father's life, and she squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself not to cry in front of him. "I hate you."

Such a stupid, pointless thing to say, but it's enough to make his laughter ebb away. She steals a glance at him from the corner of her eyes, expecting to find anger, but all she can make out on his expression is a stony seriousness.

"Maybe so. But bear in mind, none of them," he points towards her family's graves, "are here because of me."

Allison isn't sure what to make of the statement. Perhaps he's trying to turn her further against Derek by pointing out his involvement in their deaths. Perhaps he's just making a point, letting her know that her life was hardly perfect before he and his pack came into town. As if she didn't know it. Truth is – Kate, Gerard, even her mom, they all had it coming, and Allison is perfectly aware of it, can't ignore it even if she tried.

She doesn't look at him, stares at the words on her mother's gravestone until the words blur. Slowly, surely, the surge of blazing fury dims, and all that remains are the low-burning embers of anger that's always been inside her since that night her mother died. Something he said, before, when they held her captive comes back to her, worming into the forefront of her mind. She didn't really pay attention then, too frightened and distracted by the way he was pushing her buttons, but now she remembers. It's like a puzzle that insists on being solved.

"You said that hunters make good werewolves. How did you know? If they all choose death over turning, then how do you know what they'd be like? That they wouldn't go crazy or something because it tears them apart inside?"

Deucalion smiles the secretive kind of smile that says he knows something she doesn't, and she bristles inside because inexplicably it makes her feel as if her question was stupid and naive when she thinks it's a valid point.

"Is that what you think? That it would tear you apart from the inside? That something in your hunter upbringing would rebel against it?"

"We're not talking about me," she says, even though she's starting to realize that maybe they are. Maybe they've been talking about her all along. "And you're dodging my question. How can you know, when there's no precedent?"

He reaches out and takes her wrist in his. His fingertips – human and blunt – trace the lines of her veins. The gesture, though gentle and not threatening in an obvious manner, makes her want to pull away, but she knows that if he decided to bite her right then and there, she couldn't possibly be quick enough to escape, and she's let him get too close for the crossbow to be an effective weapon. She's estimating how quickly she could reach for the knife in her bag when he speaks, pulling her from her thoughts.

"I didn't say there was no precedent. Most hunters who've suffered the bite choose to kill themselves or are eliminated by others before they can complete the transition. Occasionally, though, there's a hunter who embraces the gift. It happens rarely, but that doesn't mean it never happens."

Something about his choice of words is sitting uncomfortably with her, the way he talks about the bite. "Is it a gift if you never asked for it?" she challenges.

It makes her flinch when he suddenly reaches across her body, and she's momentarily distracted by the way it brings him close enough that she can smell the warm, earthy scent of his skin, the faint hint of aftershave. Her heart is beating in her throat, and the confusing rush of emotions crashing through her unbalances her so much that she doesn't notice that he picked up her crossbow until he sits back up again, a safe distance between them.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._ She can't believe that she let him take her weapon this easily, without any resistance or protest at all.

Warily, she watches the way he handles it, unsure what he's playing at. If he wanted to hurt her, he didn't need a weapon.

"When you found out about werewolves and hunters, about who you were, who your family was. When your father gave you your first crossbow, you didn't ask for it, did you? I bet you didn't really want it to begin with. You just wanted to go back to the way things were before, when your parents would give you books and pretty clothes instead of deadly weapons." There's a flash of fangs when he smiles at her, briefly and sharply, and she can't help but wonder if maybe he hasn't been hanging around town for longer than they've all realized, watching and waiting.

Suddenly he moves, lightning-fast, spinning the crossbow towards the group of trees opposite them. He shoots. Allison startles and her heart does a summersault. There's a rustle, and a large bird falls from the tree, arrow piercing its body. Allison swallows drily.

"And yet, hasn't it served you well? You've made it your own, that gift you never wanted, and you mastered it and it probably saved your life on more than one occasion. Does it matter, in the end, if you wanted it to begin with or not?"

He turns the bow and holds it out to her, handle-first, and it's the fluidity of the gesture that triggers recognition even though the ease with which he moved it and fired the shot before should have been obvious enough. The weight of the realization settles in her stomach like a cold, hard stone she swallowed.

"You were a hunter. Before you became a wolf. You were talking about yourself, before."

He seems pleased that she's figured it out. The way he looks at her reminds her of how a tutor would look at his star pupil, like he's proud of her for drawing the conclusions from the clues he laid out for her. She tries to fight the way the blush rises to her face under his satisfied expression, to no avail.

He pushes himself up from the ground.

"Quite. I'm still a hunter." His smile is broad and predatory. "The hunt has changed a little, though."

The implications are clear. It's her who's prey now; her and her dad and Scott and Derek and anyone who isn't _with_ Deucalion. She watches him stand and walk away. Before the darkness swallows him, he turns back towards her.

"Go home, Allison," he taunts. "It's not safe out here."

_I can protect myself_, she wants to say, wants to protest the notion that she's a fragile little human thing that needs protection. Wants to tell him that she's not prey and won't ever let herself be so again.

It would be nothing but words, though.

She fires without raising the bow, too quick for him to see it coming. The arrow soars inches past his head. It gives her a deep sense of satisfaction to see the startled expression on his face before it gives way to his usual arrogance.

"You missed."

Allison shrugs and picks up her things, deliberately making a show of putting the crossbow away. She brushes past him when she passes him. "No, I didn't," she says, plugging the arrow from where it has speared a small rodent onto the tree behind him and wiping the blood off the tip.

Walking away, she can feel his eyes on him. It takes all her willpower not to turn around.

End.

A/N: There's probably a fourth and final part coming up sometime soon. I hope I can get it done before season three starts and josses it even more hopelessly than the trailer already did, but I can't make any promises. As always, comments are very much appreciated.


	4. The Shape of Things to Come

**Hunter's Moon**  
**IV. The Shape of Things to Come**  
by Sandrine Shaw

It's still dark outside when Allison wakes up. The neon numbers on the alarm clock glow green, blurry, and she has to wipe her eyes to make out the time. 3:43. Another three hours before she has to get up for school, unless she skips history, then she can maybe squeeze in an extra hour of sleep.

She's about to turn around and drift off again when something nags at the edges of her consciousness, restlessly poking at her until she fights off the tiredness and sits up.

It takes her entirely too long to realize that she's not alone. Her hand reaches under the pillow for the knife she keeps there, just in case, but it comes up empty.

"Looking for this?" Deucalion steps out of the shadows, into the wan cone of light falling into her window from the streetlamps outside. The knife gleams when he twirls it in his hand.

Allison swallows, trying to steady her racing heartbeat by telling herself that the knife is a pointless weapon for him; he could do just as much damage without it if that's what he wanted. Except, of course, there's little comfort in that thought at all.

"What do you want?" By now, the question feels repetitive, perfunctory. He's never given her a straight answer before.

He sits down on the edge of her bed, not quite close enough to touch, but enough that the warmth of his body seeps towards her. The way he pins the covers in place makes her feel trapped, suddenly irrationally claustrophobic.

"For a hunter, your house is ridiculously poorly warded against werewolves. No wolfsbane, no mountain ash, the open window. It's pretty much an invitation to pay you a visit." In the dark she can't make out much of his face, but his smile reveals a dangerous flash of sharp teeth.

She pulls her legs to her chest and hugs her knees. The covers slip off and the cool draft of autumn air from the window makes her shiver. "Maybe it was not an invitation meant for you."

She's whispering. She doesn't know why she's whispering. She doesn't want to alert her father, she tells herself, because she doesn't want to put him in danger. When Deucalion laughs, the sound makes her wince, even though it's probably too soft to be heard beyond the walls of her room. Not by human ears anyway.

"Scott hasn't been coming through your window in months. You're a smart girl. I think if it had been an invitation for him, you'd have found a way to get the point across by now."

A flush of embarrassment rises to her cheeks, and she's not sure if it's because of the implication that he's been watching her (_months_, he said, and she wonders how many times he's been outside of her window, how many times he'd been _in her room_ without her noticing), or the underhanded compliment, or the way his hand has been moving towards her, fingers brushing over her bare leg.

"Tell me, Allison," he asks, "do you still dream of me?"

The scar at the back of her neck tingles. She turns away and bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from answering. Her fist clenches in the covers, as if that would be enough to steady her.

She jumps a little when he touches her cheek and turns her face back towards him. Her stomach somersaults. He's right in front of her now, close enough to kiss, close enough to bite, and she isn't even sure if this is real at all, if he's really here, or if she's dreaming again.

"You should come to the warehouse tomorrow night," he tells her.

"And if I don't? You can't make me."

He raises an eyebrow at her and she immediately feels stupid. Of course he could make her. He shrugs. "If you don't, then you don't. I'm not making you do anything, Allison."

His thumb brushes against her lip, and for a second, she _aches_ with want. It's been entirely too long since anyone touched her in a manner that was neither platonic nor violent, and Deucalion has been playing with her for weeks now, always keeping her on the edge between fear and desire. It's only a matter of time before it tips in either direction, and she doesn't want to be afraid anymore.

The touch is gone from one second to the next, and when she realizes that her eyes have fluttered shut and opens them again, the room is empty, nothing but the imprint on the bed suggesting that someone else had been there at all.

It's uncomfortably cold, suddenly. Allison stands and shuts the window.

* * *

When she makes it to the warehouse the night after, her dad is already there. So are Scott and Derek and Boyd, and the Alpha pack. They have Stiles and Isaac trussed up in chains, bruises and cuts blooming on their faces, and she wonders if she looked quite that bad, quite so _helpless_, that day when she was the one in their position.

None of them have spotted her yet, though there's a moment when Deucalion turns towards the shadows where she's hiding and smiles, and she's almost sure that he knows she's here. But he turns back to the others as if nothing had happened, and Allison releases the breath she's been holding.

"It's very simple," Deucalion says, and even though Allison can't quite see who he's addressing, the responding growl sounds distinctively like Derek. "It's time that we bring this little stalemate to an end. As much fun as it's been, we need to move on. So here's the deal. Either you choose to come with us, or Scott does. You can agree now, or we kill one of your little friends here, and then we'll start this all over again. I haven't quite decided which one of them will die first, though I think we might want to keep lovely Stiles for last. He's a lot more entertaining."

He pats Stiles' cheek, and Allison hears Scott making a sound that's half-threatening, half-pained.

It doesn't particularly surprise her that her father didn't invite her along tonight; that Scott didn't mention anything, but it still stings. _Poor little Allison; we should keep her in the dark so she can't get kidnapped or hurt again or, worse, she'll snap and shoot people._

It's not fair, of course. They're only trying to protect her by keeping her away from all this, and she rationally knows that it's because they love her, but she's not feeling very rational. All she ever wanted was to prove that she was able to handle herself. To not feel helpless and powerless and vulnerable anymore, not needing someone to come and save her, like she did that day last year when the Alpha chased them through the school. So she took up a crossbow and learned how to use it, but even when she went after Derek and his pack to get revenge for her mum, she still didn't feel powerful. She felt desperate.

She's done with that.

So when Deucalion casually tells them, "You don't have to decide right now, of course. You can wait until we've torn Isaac in half," Allison steps forward.

"I'll come with you," she says, loud enough that her voice echoes through the warehouse.

Everything is happening at once. Her dad shouts out, "Allison, no!" Scott growls, sounding angry and wounded and utterly inhuman.

Kali throws her head back and laughs, and the sound bounces off the walls. "Sweetheart, you're overestimating your value," she mocks. "We're looking for an Alpha. You're not even a wolf."

Allison drowns it all out. Kali's derision, the twins' amusement, Scott's helpless frustration, her dad's shock, it all fades away until it's just meaningless background noise. Her eyes lock with Deucalion's across the room, and for a moment, it's like they're the only people in the warehouse. They're the only ones who matter anyway, she's starting to realize, forcing herself not to avert her gaze.

Right from the start, Deucalion had singled her out. Kidnapped her and saved her life and threatened her and drew her in with truths she wasn't quite ready to hear, and it's all culminating in this moment. It was always going to lead to this; she understands that now. That's why her voice is firm and hard when she makes her demands.

"I'll come with you. Willingly. You let Isaac and Stiles go, and no one else gets hurt. You will leave the others alone, they will all walk away unharmed and we'll get out of this town and never come back. Do we have a deal?"

Kali's amusement has turned to anger now, but Allison doesn't pay attention to her. Kali is not the one making the decisions here. "I don't think you quite understand your –"

Deucalion overrides her without tearing his eyes away from Allison. "We have a deal."

The smile he gives her is complacent and satisfied. She can't quite begrudge him his victory; there's no denying that he's won. He got what he came for, even if she doesn't quite understand why or how what he came for was _her_.

He's won alright, but she doesn't feel like she lost at all.

"Come here," he says.

Her heart beats a frantic tattoo, anticipation and fear mingling until she can't tell them apart. She feels slightly sick and choked up with nerves. He holds out his hand and beckons her closer.

Behind her, her dad is screaming. When she turns to look at him, she sees that he's straining to rush towards her, but Derek is bodily holding him back. It breaks her heart. She mouths a silent, 'I'm sorry' as she crosses the distance to where Deucalion is waiting for her and puts her arm into his outstretched hand.

"You can't seriously mean to–" Kali starts again, addressing Deucalion. She's clearly furious now. Deucalion silences her with a flicking gaze, eyes flashing red, and a sharp, "Shut up." She falls quiet immediately, and Deucalion's eyes are back on Allison.

He looks down at her arm, his lips twitching in amusement. His fingers close around her wrist and when he tugs her forward, Allison expects teeth in her forearm. She's been thinking about the bite for a while now, wondering what it would feel like, expecting a simple transaction through pain and blood.

Instead, she finds herself spun around and pulled flush against Deucalion, her back against the lean, muscular line of his front, his hands on her shoulders holding her in place, his breath against her neck. His cock stirring against the small of her back, obvious even through two layers of clothing, as he forces her body against his.

Her bravado momentarily falters and she wonders if she misjudged the situation. If he was just playing with her and never intended to give her the bite at all.

Then he pulls her head to the right and reaches for the neckline of her shirt, and she understands. The fabric makes an ugly sound when he tears it, baring her shoulder. She feels his fingers brushing against the skin in what could almost be a caress, and she shivers under the touch. A deep, rumbling chuckle close to her ear makes her flush in embarrassment and something else entirely.

It distracts her: the intimacy of their position, his amusement, his warm breath on her skin, the heady rush of desire. For a moment she forgets what this is about, and before she can remember why she should be afraid, his fangs sink into her shoulder.

It hurts. It hurts like crazy, a fiery explosion of burning agony.

Her dad is screaming his throat raw, and Scott's wails are ear-shattering and she thinks she might just break down from the pain. But Deucalion's arm around her waist holds her up when he pulls his teeth out of her flesh, and she digs her fingers into his skin to steady herself and bites her lips until the urge to scream has ebbed away.

_Breathe through it_, she tells herself. _Just breathe._

Deucalion leans in. "That's it," he whispers into her ear. "You're going to be perfect."

She can feel blood trickling down her back, beneath her torn shirt, and it's only now that she realizes that it's the same spot where her mum was bitten.

She pushes him away with all the force she can muster, which frankly isn't much; she never stood a chance against him, physically, but right now it's just ridiculous, and she knows that the only reason he lets go is because he wants her to stumble. And stumble she does, but somehow, miraculously, she manages to keep on her feet.

Scott moves to catch her, and she can feel the anger vibrating through his body and his voice when he addresses Deucalion, "Let them go. Stiles and Isaac. You said they were free to go now."

"Not just yet."

Allison shrugs off Scott's hold and stands on wobbly legs. "No, we had a deal," she says. "You promised that you'd let them go."

"And I will." He makes it sound almost reasonable, as if she was the one expecting something outrageous. "Now go home, pack up some things. We'll leave in the morning."

Maybe it's the pain that makes her so slow to understand what he's playing at. When she does, at last, she feels oddly disappointed. "You don't trust me. You think I won't come back. I gave you my word!"

Deucalion brushes off her outrage with an argument that settles likes a heavy stone in her stomach. "It's not your word I don't trust. I just think we should have an insurance policy in case your father and Scott decide that the decision shouldn't be yours."

It makes sense, of course, and she berates herself for not even having considered it before.

He turns to her father and the others. "Have her back by sunrise, and you can take Stiles and Isaac with you. If not, well... we've been through this before."

* * *

They still try, of course.

Back at home, when she's throwing clothes in a bag – functional stuff she can run and fight in, leaving the pretty dresses and heels in her closet – Scott and her dad hover around the corners of the room, talking about options and protecting her and how stupid she was to have come to the warehouse in the first place. Allison knows they're only a breath away from overpowering her and locking her away for as long as they still can.

"We will find another way to save–"

"No," she snaps, frustrated. "You will not make a liar out of me. I made my choice, I gave my word, and I intend to keep it. I love you both, but you have to let me go. Look, these might be literally our last moments together. Can we... not waste them with fighting?"

She catches Scott throwing a desperate look at her father. "I know you love me and you're just trying to protect me and do what you think is best for me. But can't you just respect me enough to accept my decision?"

Her dad looks crestfallen and broken like she's never seen him before, not even on the night in the hospital after her mom died. "I don't want to let you go. You're my little girl."

"I'm not," she says, and it breaks her heart. "This time tomorrow, I'll be one of the monsters you've been hunting for all your life. You don't have to protect me anymore. I can protect myself."

* * *

Later, after they've said their tearful goodbyes, Derek is the one to give her a lift back to the warehouse. Both her dad and Scott wanted to come, but she wouldn't let them. It's her turn to protect them, now. Someone has to come to pick up Isaac and Stiles, and it makes sense that it's Derek because he's the Alpha, and even though the worst of the tension between them from after her mom died has been smoothed out over the last couple of months, he's also the one she cares least about and whose safety she's not terribly concerned with.

The silence between them feels charged and uneasy, and halfway towards the warehouse, he turns to her and begins, "You know you don't have to–"

She doesn't let him finish. "Not you, too. I've already heard this from my dad and Scott. I really don't need someone else to question my choices."

"I wasn't going to. I just wanted to tell you that even as a wolf, you still have a home here. Whatever happens. Even if you become an Alpha, you can always return." It's an unexpected offer, and sincere enough that Allison believes that he means it, even if she's not sure how or if it would work out, if it came to that.

It doesn't matter, though. "Thank you. I doubt they'd just let me return, though. He wouldn't. Not after all the trouble he went through to make me join him."

Derek looks uncomfortable, guilty, like he's tempted to do something stupid and help her dad and Scott stop her from going.

"It's okay," Allison says. "It was my choice. No one is making me do anything I don't want to do."

"You're doing it because you want to save Stiles and Isaac."

She shrugs. "That's just making my decision a little easier."

Derek looks at her with a frown, and she almost wants to tell him to pay attention to the traffic just so he'll stop watching her like that. There is no traffic to pay attention to, though. The road ahead is dark and deserted.

"I can see why you'd choose to become a wolf, after everything that happened. What I don't understand is why you'd leave with them. If you had a choice."

_Everything that happened_ is such a painless, understated way to phrase it. _Scott being bitten, Kate burning down my family, Peter going on a crazy revenge spree and almost killing you and all your friends at your high school, Gerard having the Kanima use you as a pawn against Scott, your mum choosing to kill herself after I bit her, the way you went crazy and tried to kill my pack_, that's what Derek doesn't say.

But just because he wraps it up in a blanket 'everything that happened' doesn't make it any less true, or any less horrible.

"Ever since I've moved to this town, I've had to watch everyone I loved lose any sort of control they had over their lives. I don't think I've felt in control of my own life since I came here, and I need to change that. I can't do that here, not with my father hovering over my shoulder and Scott expecting me to be someone I'm not. And Deucalion–"

She falters. Truth is, her feelings for Deucalion are still a tangled mess she can't quite make sense of. He doesn't scare her like he used to, now, and she's beginning to understand that the pull she feels towards him is not just physical. She can't explain that to Derek, though, and neither does she feel inclined to try. "He knows things. He can teach me."

The expression on Derek's face tells her he doesn't approve of her choice, but at least he has the decency not to question it, and it's something she's grateful for.

"Do me a favor?" she asks, and waits until he looks at her before she continues. "Take care of my dad. Make sure he doesn't do something stupid."

She knows she's asking for a lot, especially from Derek, but there's no one else she can enlist for the task. Scott is too young and the Sheriff doesn't know about the kind of things they deal with on a daily basis.

Derek's mouth is an unhappy downward curve. "I doubt that Chris will listen to anything I have to say. We're not friends. We're barely even allies."

"You've always been on the same side when it counted."

"He doesn't trust me," Derek argues, sounding mildly petulant.

Allison sighs. "Trust is a two-way street, Derek. If the Alphas have taught us anything, it's that we need to work together if we want to survive, or the next thing that comes and tries to take us down will tear us apart."

Derek looks at her with a raised eyebrow, and Allison notices her mistake. She swallows against the lump in her throat. "You, I mean. Not we. You."

* * *

The Alphas are waiting in the warehouse when Derek and Allison arrive, forming a circle around their two prisoners like they expect an attack. Deucalion is sitting on a half-broken crate in front, his pose relaxed, watching her keenly as she pushes through the heavy doors. Behind him, the others glare at her. She notices that Aiden is favoring his right side and there's a bleeding gash on Kali's neck that doesn't seem to be healing as fast as it should. Alpha wounds. It looks like there's been a bit of a disagreement while she was away and someone put them in their place.

She walks up to Deucalion until she's standing right in front of him, barely a foot of distance between them. He makes no move to get up, which means that she just towers over him. She's been so used to craning her neck to look into his eyes that looking down at him feels odd, but it's not an unwelcome change in perspective.

"Let them go," she demands.

"Who says this isn't a ploy and you're not going to run the minute your friends are free?" Aiden snarls.

She wishes he'd died from the wolfsbane poison that night in the woods. She wants to tell him to go to hell, but she barely has time to open her mouth before Deucalion speaks.

"Cut them loose now," he says calmly. None of the others object.

Allison watches the twins free Scott and Isaac, shoving them in Derek's direction, who pulls them behind his body, shielding them.

Stiles looks barely conscious, but his voice is as animated as ever, angry and frustrated and reproachful. "You can't let her do this, Derek! You have a plan, right?"

"Shut up, Stiles," Derek snaps, every bit as angry, and his eyes meet Allison's over the distance. She nods at him and watches as he ushers Isaac and a protesting Stiles away.

This is it, then.

She turns back towards Deucalion, who's been watching her the whole time with satisfaction and appraisal. "You know, I wasn't entirely sure your friends wouldn't talk you out of leaving, or make you try to pull off some stunt to fight us." She shrugs, less anxious now that the others are gone and the only one the Alphas can hurt is her. "Maybe the plan is to make you trust me and then I'll kill all of you in your sleep."

Deucalion flashes a sharp smile at her.

The old scar at the back of her neck stings suddenly, painfully, and she's assaulted by a vivid mental image. She sees herself wolved out, eyes red, fangs and claws gleaming with fresh blood, standing next to Deucalion, a sea of blood around them, and lying within it are the scattered, torn bodies of Kali, Ennis and the twins.

The vision only lasts a few seconds before it dissolves, and when it clears, Deucalion is still smiling at her, lopsided and amused. "I think we need to talk about that violent streak of yours sometime," he chides her lightly, mischievously. "Maybe we can put it to good use."

She looks at him and wonders if that was her or him, and if it was a warning or perhaps a promise. Her head throbs with the aftershock of the vision, and the bite on her shoulder burns, like it's beginning to stitch itself together, agonizingly slowly. She can feel the way her body is gradually changing, her senses sharpening, like cotton wool being pulled off her eyes and ears.

"I'm sure we can find some common ground," she says, tentatively, and remembers his words from the graveyard. "Like you said, it's just the hunt that's changed."

He stands, and she realizes that the steady, rhythmic sound that's filling her ears is his heartbeat. He reaches out to brush her hair from her eyes. She wonders if they're glowing amber already.

His smile widens. "I knew you'd see things my way eventually."

End.

This is it, people! Thanks for reading, and staying along for the ride when what was supposed to be a short ficlet turned into a series. As always, comments are very much appreciated. I'm just glad that I got this done just in time before season three starts airing and inevitably josses the hell out of it. *g* You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to seeing Deucalion on screen!


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